Jerry Murray, the mid-level Wal-Mart Stores Inc (WMT.N) executive who called the chain's early February sales "a total disaster" in an email made public by Bloomberg, left the world's largest retailer last week, Wal-Mart confirmed on Wednesday.

On Wednesday, Bloomberg reported that Murray had left the company on April 5. Wal-Mart told Reuters that it was Murray's decision to leave and that his last day at Wal-Mart was Friday. A replacement has not yet been named.

"In case you haven't seen a sales report these days, February (month-to-date) sales are a total disaster," Murray, a Wal-Mart vice president who worked on finance in the U.S. logistics division, said in a February 12 email to other executives, Bloomberg reported on February 15. "The worst start to a month I have seen in my (about) 7 years with the company.

On February 21, Wal-Mart reported that its Walmart U.S. unit had a slow start to February, which it attributed largely to a delay in customers getting their tax refunds.

Murray had been a vice president and chief financial officer of logistics at Wal-Mart since 2011, according to a profile posted on LinkedIn. According to that profile, he joined Wal-Mart in 2006 after working at Honeywell (HON.N), General Motors (GM.N) and Coopers & Lybrand.

I frankly don't see what he did wrong, at least not from the text - seems to me like even Walmart admitted "its Walmart U.S. unit had a slow start to February".

The guy was in a management position, so I venture to say that either this was the beginning of his email followed with "I know you guys can do better! Let's make March a fantastic sales month!" or the sandwich approach, aka the praise, then criticize followed with more praise.

Terms like "total disaster" when leaked out, and they always are, drive the marketcritters to sell their Walmart stock. That lowers its price, and a lot of Walmart employees have stock or stock options.

When your wordcraft starts hitting your fellow managers in their pockets it's time to dust off your resume.

The first drives away upper income customers with more disposable income.

The second drives away the middle class who can go elsewhere.

Leaving you with a customer base consisting of the lowest income bracket which can't maintain your per-share profits.

Stock prices fall, people sell off the stock, managers repeat Items 1 and 2 to try to salvage their stock options, per-store maintenance expenditures are curtailed, you get the picture.......Zayres went under and was replaced by Kmart.

Load of nonsense. Wal-Mart maintains per-share profits by releasing generic products that are of the same quality in most cases as the competitor they are mimicking. They do not cut product quality because they continue to sell the original product. Upper income customers stay were they are because the same products with the same quality is still being sold there. If you are going to make a grand motion like this, at least use the actual facts about how a company operates and where its revenue comes from.

Also worth noting that Wal-Mart isn't maintaining anything technically. Their net income goes up year over year. Their primary market is lower income to middle income so unless you believe that poor people will suddenly cease to exist, your scenario is not likely.

Load of nonsense. Wal-Mart maintains per-share profits by releasing generic products that are of the same quality in most cases as the competitor they are mimicking. They do not cut product quality because they continue to sell the original product. Upper income customers stay were they are because the same products with the same quality is still being sold there. If you are going to make a grand motion like this, at least use the actual facts about how a company operates and where its revenue comes from.

Also worth noting that Wal-Mart isn't maintaining anything technically. Their net income goes up year over year. Their primary market is lower income to middle income so unless you believe that poor people will suddenly cease to exist, your scenario is not likely.

Apparently you shop at a different Wal-Mart chain than the one I'm talking about. Once Wal-Mart starts selling its generic brand of an item the generally stop carrying most of the other varieties of the same item keeping only a much more limited quantity of usually the highest costing like item which leaves the customer the choice of either the Wal-Mart "not" Great Vale item or a significantly more expensive similar item - driving sales of their item.

Get your facts straight. Kmart is still open in more than 1,300 locations. They purchased Sears in 2005 becoming Sears Holdings, the #3 general merchandiser in the US.

Never said they were completely gone - just that they are a pale shadow of what they once were. We've still got 2 K-Marts near me but they are as I described; run down, poorly maintained, poorly staffed, and poorly stocked. They are literally depressing places to walk into and I only shop there if I find a particular bargain in their weekly advert.

Two of our anchor stores in our mall are sears and K-Mart, and they are also the two most run down stores in the mall... haven't been renovated in decades... stocked items suck... place just feels dead...

Wal-Mart is starting to feel the same way, heck when our Wal-Mart was built in the mid 90's it was a prototype store and the largest Wal-Mart on the east coast (no longer that) in the past 2yrs it went from feeling packed and busy to feeling empty and under stocked... heck almost every isle you have shelf's with just holes in them where no products are at... it's not because they are selling that much, go day to day and you see those same holes... they just never stock them! and its not that they aren't stocking, they get about 10 semi-truck loads of products a day in and stock them every night.... its like corporate / distribution just isn't sending products out and don't care there are gaps in almost every isle... and I mean gaps... like 10 foot long holes of nothing in a 40 foot long isle....